Gustavo Sanchez talks about opening new markets ( and comes clean about his obviously secret moonlighting gig as a crime fighter) February 15, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Humor, Staff posts , add a commentMy name is Gustavo Sanchez. I have been a project manager for Safecount for little over a year now, working out of Puerto Rico offices. Recently I had the opportunity to work on the first Ad-Index study in Puerto Rico.
We worked with a major ad agency here on measuring the online components of a major ad campaign for a large advertiser. Our main study objective was to assess the effectiveness of the online campaign at increasing awareness, ad awareness, sponsorship association and purchase intent. Since our product is completely new to Puerto Rico (The Puerto Rico office mainly supports the New York office) it was a very rewarding experience to work on. We worked with US publishers on this study, but the challenging part was introducing our product to some local sites, specifically local news outlets ENDI.com and Wapa.tv, since they were not familiar with survey recruitment. Even though we faced some issues, recruitment was remarkably positive, and all people involved were really responsive to our demands.
Some of my interests outside of Safecount include music, family and friends. And comic books.
Big News for Publishers: Google AdSense Now Supports Third-Party Ad Serving Technology ( Via Search Engine Round Table) May 20, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOriginal content at Search Engine Round Table HERE
Google announced that AdSense (the AdWords content network) now supports the use of third-party ad serving techniques and technologies. I am not sure if most publishers understand the significants of this. Many large companies would not even think about placing an ad on a publisher’s site without being able to track the results of those ads (impressions and clicks) through a third-party ad serving intermediary. Got that?
What this now brings to AdSense are major agencies and advertisers with large budgets, who are now more willing to dip their ad budgets in Google’s content network. More advertisers with bigger budgets means more money for AdSense publishers.
There are a few requirements for these ads to show up on AdSense publishers sites.
(1) You must opt into image ads
(2) Enable advertisers to target your AdSense channels
(3) Opt into placement targeting
If you have all three, then you can now enable advertisers to place these ads on your site.
Will the ads look different? Yes, they shockingly won’t contain the ‘Ads by Google’ text near the ad. Even more of a reason for larger advertisers to use the Google content network.
Will the ads act differently? Yes, they will open in a new window as opposed to staying in the same window.
Which third party tracking vendors are certified?
(A) North America: Ad servers include DoubleClick DFA and Mediaplex/ValueClick
(B) North America: Rich media include DoubleClick Rich Media, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, Interpolls, Pointroll, and Unicast.
(C) North America: Research include Dynamic Logic/Safecount, Factor TG, IAG, and InsightExpress.
You may need to update your privacy policy to include more details about these third-party tracking techniques. More on that over here.
Can you block these ads? Many you can by using the competitive ad filter, but the third-party Flash ads you cannot block without contacting Google.
Here are three videos from Google on 3rd-party ad serving to help explain it better. It is a three part series by one of our favorite Google personalities, Maile:
Online tracking rules must exclude research, says CMOR April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOnline tracking rules must exclude research, says CMOR Via Research-Live.com
Industry association urges FTC to clarify definitions for regulating online tracking
 |
US– Industry association CMOR is calling for research to be made exempt from definitions of ‘behavioural tracking’, as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) drafts principles for regulating online behavioural advertising.
CMOR said in a submission to the FTC that although it supports “most of the concepts and goals” underpinning the principles, the specific proposals “could have significant negative consequences for the survey and opinion research profession, and strangle many possible new methods of research… before they’ve even been conceived”.
It called on the FTC, which published the principles and invited comment on them in January, to “flesh out and clarify” its broad definition of behavioural advertising, to ensure that it does not restrict tracking for legitimate research purposes.
FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell told Research: “We’re reviewing the comments and contemplating what steps we should take.”
CMOR expressed similar concerns about proposals from consumer groups for a ‘do-not-track’ list, which were put to the FTC in October last year.
The groups behind the do-not-track idea have claimed it does not target researchers, but CMOR’s director of government affairs Howard Fienberg said: “If that’s the case they need to make that explicit.”
CMOR said that in the form proposed, the list “would make no useful distinction between tracking data collected for research, transactional, political, governmental, or commercial/sales purposes”.
Some consumer groups were not convinced by CMOR’s arguments for protecting research. In his blog, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy called the submission “self-serving” and said “researchers can’t be given a free pass to push the limits of data mining in the digital era”.
Fienberg warned that it’s a “very short step” from self-regulatory guidelines to regulation being imposed by lawmakers. Moves are already afoot in Connecticut and New York to introduce regulation of behavioural advertising, and other states may soon follow, he said.
George Pappachen, director of privacy and public policy at Safecount, which seeks to promote methods of web measurement that don’t threaten privacy, pointed out that research can be a powerful force in favour of consumer privacy. “The opportunity is to understand consumers to the point of knowing what they’ll accept and what they won’t accept,” he said. “On one hand we want to educate the marketplace but on the other hand we want to bridge the gap between consumers and the marketplace.”
When it comes to building public understanding and support, Pappachen believes the online research industry has a lot of work to do. “The ordinary person probably doesn’t understand it nearly as well as they need to,” he said. “Marketing is not the research industry’s strong suit. It’s not something that’s been high on their agenda but it’s definitely something they need to focus on.”
Author: Robert Bain
Internet Cookies Aren’t Evil: 6 Myths Busted December 28, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentVia Daily Bits Article HERE
Viruses, Trojan horses, worms, phishers, spam e-mails, and online fraud; these are the perfect ingredients to scare the unaware users of the Internet. And I am not talking about a certain group or country here. It seems like anywhere around the world, people have heard of such threats and have become more afraid to the point that they even take too much a precaution with (or against) their most trusted websites. Sadly, innocence played the bad guy’s role this time, and one of its victims is the tiny little chunk of data we call Internet cookie.
Today, let’s play myth busters and help our dear Internet cookies rid themselves of a number of accusations. Let’s investigate such misconceptions one by one.
Misconception #1: Internet cookies are a form of virus or worm that can cause damage to your computer.
For those who believe and are going overboard on thinking that Internet cookies are destructive viruses or worms, then I’m sorry for breaking the news to you. Internet cookies cannot cause damage, unlike a computer virus or worm. In fact, cookies do not really have anything to do with your computer system, as it is only composed of text understandable by both your browser and the web server that sent it. In short, Internet cookies are composed of only data, not programmed or programmable code.
Misconception #2: Internet cookies are spywares that give away your private information to the entirety of the web.
Don’t instantly believe your anti-spyware when it detects “something malicious” from certain websites, for it might just be judging your cookies by mistake. Internet cookies contain information like browser type, IP addresses, and some private information, like usernames, that you provided (out of your own free will, of course), and that fact makes you afraid of Internet cookies being spywares themselves. But fear not, for the reason why Internet cookies took such information about you is because they only want to customize your surfing activities to your own liking.
For example, most websites that require registration for you to visit them have an option of whether to remember you or not. This means that the web server of one of those websites can use Internet cookies to identify you among their database of users. The Internet cookie for that website will then customize your surfing activity by remembering your login information for you, so you don’t have to type them again. However, as mentioned in number one, Internet cookies are non-programmable and non-configurable, so there’s really no need to worry about them being spywares.
On a personal note, I must warn you not to fully trust such “auto-remember” features of a website especially when you are using public or office computers. My warning is not because your Internet cookie might be a spyware (which it is not), but you should avoid being remembered by the Internet cookie of a website because some malicious others can easily access your accounts once they use the computer where you are the last one who logged in to.
Misconception #3: Internet cookies produce pop-ups or allow their entrance to your browser.
This is definitely a “no-can-do” for Internet cookies. Simply put, pop-ups comprises an online advertising scheme that increase Internet traffic, as they are contained in a separate browser window once its link is clicked. I find it rather doubtful that an Internet cookie could be triggered, not to mention open a web browser and burden the fast-paced Internet traffic that has always been loaded with server requests and replies.
Misconception #4: Internet cookies give way to spamming.
Spamming, according to Wikipedia, is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. In relation to Internet cookies, this, certainly, is not one of the functions of an Internet cookie, especially since an Internet cookie is just a group of data, not a programmed or programmable code (this seems to be the best explanation for all the misconceptions people have against Internet cookies). Also, they can only serve as informative tools browsers use for the computer user and nothing more.
Misconception #5: Internet cookies are for advertising purposes only, causing alarm on the consumer’s part.
Internet cookies serve a lot of purpose other than advertising. While it is true that advertisers somehow make use of the cookies’ ability to store browsing behaviors of users who click on their advertisements in a web page, Internet cookies are more than what we thought. Actually, Internet cookies care a lot about the consumers in this virtual market.
Like any form of media there is today, the Internet also runs on advertisements to make browsing websites free for consumers. It would be too hard for you, a consumer, if you need to pay a website before browsing it every single time, right? It would also be too hard for online publishers if they should generate revenues of their own, similar with advertisers if they cannot reach their audience. Internet cookies make this seemingly triangular problem by allowing advertisers to promote on different publishers’ websites for consumers. Through watching a consumer’s surfing behavior, the cookies ensure that, while keeping enough ads for advertisers to catch an audience and for publishers to generate income, consumers will not be bombarded by too much promotion.
This means that website publishers’ revenues will remain constant (if not increase), which will maintain the good qualities of websites and website contents. Also, advertisers will continue supplying resources to the publishers. In turn, Internet surfing will remain free of subscription for us consumers. I believe everyone will agree with me that the last premise is for everybody’s own good!
Misconception #6: The best way to avoid any damage caused by Internet cookies is to disable and delete them.
You don’t want to do this, believe me. Internet cookies make our virtual lives easier by giving us an option to remember all our seemingly repetitive details we keep on typing on websites’ textboxes. Imagine your Internet life without cookies to aid you. You have to type every single detail about you whenever you have to log on some website.
This holds true for online buyers who do not have time for sorting out details and figuring out where their desired products are. Online buyers tend to just browse at a specific category of online products, get some news on what’s latest about their purchase, learn about the stock prices, and know exchange rates and other involved fees. Internet cookies actually do all those things for online buyers because, as mentioned earlier, the cookies observe the surfing behavior of a person. In the case of our online buyer above, the cookies will give highest priority to the types of products the consumer usually look for, setting the web page to that product as if by default. Also, other online services the consumer is fond of requesting for will be “suggested” by cookies through website elements like advertisements and safe pop-ups.
In relation with hindering cookie activities, a lot of Internet users believe that they will be safe from computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses if they do disable and delete their Internet cookies. That is so wrong, because cookies cannot carry any other information than that of your browser and its web host. Computer threats like viruses need not require cookies to infect your computer. We will discuss those computer risks some other time.
Companies behind it?
L
et me remind you that the misconceptions above are often abused by certain software companies for their gain. There are online software companies that overstate security threats because of the misconceptions above, persuading you to install their program to fight such “devilish tracking device” which we all know as Internet cookies. Don’t believe them, especially now that you know there is nothing to worry about regarding cookies. Be the harbinger of good news for Internet cookies, and educate those who are sticking with their false beliefs. I can only hope that someday, one of the online security organizations will look into this issue and bring Internet cookies to salvation.
Anyway, let me end this article with older findings of surveys that still speak the truth even up to now. In a study entitled “Users Don’t Understand, Can’t Delete Cookies,” by Brian Quinton of Direct Online Magazine last May 2005, a number of online companies and security watchers published reports on behavior of consumers towards cookies. Starting with a report by Jupiter Research, research entities published their own studies, all of which consistently points that roughly 35 to 50 % of online users delete their computer cookies at least once a month.
Moving along within the study, Insight Express, an Internet marketing research firm published all of their findings. Here are figures about how Internet cookies are wrongly perceived:
The indication that users are ascribing evil intent to cookies was made clearer in another portion of the InsightExpress survey. Asked to check off all the reasons that they delete cookies, two-thirds of respondents—66.5%– said they erase cookies to “protect my privacy/ prevent tracking.” That response was the second most widely given in the survey, following only “clean computer/ free up disk or memory”, something 77.4% of those polled said they agreed with.
At least the privacy/ tracking prevention answer has the virtue of being valid. Other choices from the list of reasons to delete cookies show a serious misunderstanding of the technology’s capabilities. About 57.2% said they get rid of cookies to “remove spyware/ adware” from their hard drives. About 43% said doing so “eliminates spam”; 38.7% said it prevents pop-ups; and 33.8% said it prevents computer viruses. Fifty percent of those polled also said they deleted cookies because it was “recommended”.
And finally, on June of 2005, BURST Media published a report about cookies entitled “Don’t Understand Them, Can Be Good, But, Should Be Deleted” and I would like to wrap this article up the same way they did. Here’s the last paragraph, a quote, from their report:
“Privacy and security issues taint online users overall perception of Internet cookies. Nevertheless, only one-out-of-four say they want Internet cookies ‘eliminated’,” says Chuck Moran, BURST! Media’s Market Research Manager. “There is significant opportunity for the Interactive industry – including content publishers, agencies and clients as well as third parties to build user understanding of and trust in Internet cookies.”
WPP's Safecount Makes Cookie Collection Transparent August 1, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| WPP’s Safecount Makes Cookie Collection Transparent |
| by Tameka Kee, Wednesday, Aug 1, 2007 6:00 AM ET |
| DIGITAL DATA COLLECTION, TRACKING AND research firm Safecount–a proprietary division of WPP’s Kantar Group–unveiled two free services today. One is geared toward cookie transparency for consumers and the other will manage live survey participation for publishers. Safecount most recently served as a data collection arm to Kantar’s Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic, assisting on campaign effectiveness research for brands such as American Express, General Motors and Procter & Gamble. Its services are now being opened up to other companies. At the new Safecount.net site, consumers can find out how many times they have seen a Safecount-tracked ad, what information the relevant cookies contain, and opt out of Safecount-sponsored survey participation and data collection. Safecount also offers free, phone-based consumer assistance. A recent study by the Committee for Marketing and Opinion Research found that 80% of Web users are concerned about threats to their personal privacy, particularly the use of cookies. Safecount’s new service was deemed “an admirable effort to introduce a new level of transparency on cookies to the consumer” by Fran Maier, executive director and president of TRUSTe. “The cookie viewer on the Safecount Web site should give consumers who are concerned with what is contained in their cookies a new perspective while providing an opt-out mechanism,” added Maier. In addition, Safecount launched Veranda, a service for publishers that aims to streamline the process of collecting survey-based Web site data and ensure a quality user experience. “Sometimes publishers can have four or five different companies running live Web recruitment efforts at the same time,” said Tom Kelly, COO, Safecount. “Veranda channels all visitors through one platform, giving publishers a clear view of how many surveys each user is invited to participate in and how it’s impacting the experience overall.” While providing two free, full-scale services, the bulk of Safecount’s revenues will come from Web campaign effectiveness research projects, including user participation surveys and other methods of live data collection. The company is currently managing research for mobile ad campaigns, and Kelly noted that advertiser interest in mobile data collection is mounting. “It’s already high,” said Kelly. “We have between five and 15 mobile studies scheduled at any given moment, and four months ago we didn’t have any.” Safecount also plans to develop new tactics for live data collection for emerging media such as online video, podcasts and streaming radio. |
